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Monday, 30 September 2013

Thirty!

Ooo look, this is
my thirtieth post! And I’m posting it on the thirtieth of September! That’s a
whole lot of Thirty right there. Who wants to guess where this is going?? I'll give you thirty seconds...Time's Up!

For my Thirtieth
Post on The Thirtieth of September, I present to you...

Yes. Yes I am. This is going to be fun…And long.
Reeeeaalllllyyyy long. I want you to know that I have been absolutely BUSTING to post this ALL DAY, and right now it is 10:56pm on September 29. The SECOND that clock hits midnight, I'm hitting publish!! Tehe :p

I’m doing this as a
countdown, because countdowns are FUN! These are [kind-of-sort-of-not-really]
in order…

30. Their music.

Their albums are
awesome and inspiring on a level that I’ve never experienced before. As I’ve
said before, Coldplay was my favourite band in the world for literally ten years before Mars came
along, and I didn’t love them even half as much as I love Mars. I love all of
their albums, especially…

That really sums up
everything about them, doesn’t it? They motivate me to fight to the death in defence of my dreams every single day. I’ve decided I am getting that tattooed on under my collarbone, by the way. Now I
just need to find a tattoo parlour that meets the hygiene standards of my raging
case of OCD.

This is War is also
the home of one of the greatest songs ever written, called…

Wow. That’s really
all I can say. I have now watched ARTIFACT about /cough/FifteenTimesAndNoI’mNotKidding/cough/
and it still never fails to inspire me and fill me with hope that I really can live my dreams. That the
life I long for really is possible.I
swear the only way to describe how Mars makes me feel is to say…

(NO WAY. JUST AS I
TYPED THAT MY SHUFFLE STARTED PLAYING AN ACOUSTIC VERSION OF THE KILL. I’M NOT
EVEN KIDDING. JARED IS HAUNTING MY COMPUTER.)

(UPDATE: OH MY GOD, IT PLAYED FOUR DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF THE KILL IN A
ROW. I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP!!!)*

The Kill was the
song that started all of this for me, and it was the song that saved my life.
Quite literally saved it. I was headed down a very dark and twisty path, and
The Kill helped me pull myself out of the self-destructive cycle I was living in**.
It made me realise that I didn’t have to hate myself because it is actually
quite okay to be me. I didn’t have to try to be someone else, because This is
who I really am inside. It's interesting to note (and I actually only really realised this today after having this conversation in the comments with the awesome and wonderful @mladyrebecca), The Kill was my song while I was dark and twisty, and it's STILL my song now that I'm bright and shiny. The meaning changed when I did. Or perhaps, the meaning changed, THEN I did. I'm not really sure :)

My oh my, do I love
VyRT. It is a social media platform developed by Jared and the good people at
The Hive and The Lab, and it is pretty much the greatest thing ever. They (and by
‘they’ I mainly mean ‘Jared’ given that a Shannon or Tomo sighting is about as
frequent a Lochness Monster sighting) use it to VyRT (live stream) concerts,
special events (like the day LOVE LUST FAITH + DREAMS was released or
ARTIFACT), chat with us and more recently, hang out with us via webcam on VyRT Violet. In fact right now they are selling tickets to VyRT The Hollywood Bowl...You should all definitely come!! It's going to be magical. It also leads me to…

(Okay, that does sound a little culty. But I’m
totally okay with that! This is a cult, after all.)

I love LOVE LUST FAITH + DREAMS. It is a
brilliantly crafted album that speaks to the four cornerstones of life. Recently
I have found myself breaking down pretty much everything in my life into one of
those four categories. It’s genius. And speaking of genius…

20. Jared Freaking Leto.

Can we just talk about
Jared’s genius for a moment? Now I’m not sure who originally discovered this
completely amazing fact about LOVE LUST FAITH + DREAMS, but I first discovered
it on Tumblr. Unfortunately it was months ago so I can’t remember whose Tumblr
I saw it on, but if you know who I can credit this to, please let me know! This is written in my own words, but I was definitely not the one to work this one out. I mean ARE YOU FOR SERIOUS, JARED? STOP THAT. Except don't. Ever.

If you don’t own a
copy of LLFD, let me break it down for you. Inside the CD case there’s a little
booklet that contains a page with the album track list. Exhibit A:

Each of those
coloured dots corresponds to where Jared feels the song fits within the LOVE
LUST FAITH + DREAMS spectrum. Most songs fit into a couple of categories. At
first when you look at this you’re like ‘hey, that’s pretty cool’ and then you
don’t think about it again.

BUT.

AND PREPARE
YOURSELVES.

Let’s look at where
each song fits, shall we??

LOVE:

Under love, we have
four songs:

Up In the Air

Bright Lights

Do Or Die, and

Convergence.

LUST:

Lust contains six
songs:

Conquistador

Up In The Air

The Race

End Of All Days

Bright Lights, and

Depuis Le Debut

FAITH:

Faith contains
seven songs:

Birth

Up In The Air

Bright Lights

Do Or Die

Convergence

Northern lights, and

Depuis Le Debut

DREAMS

Under the banner of
heaven, we dream out loud.

I mean…Under
dreams, there are eight songs:

Birth

Up In The Air

City Of Angels

Bright Lights

Do Or Die

Convergence

Northern Lights, and

Depuis Le Debut

Now comes the ARE
YOU KIDDING ME moment. Let’s look at those numbers:

LOVE – 4 songs. Love is a four letter word.

LUST – 6 songs. Lust is traditionally
considered ‘evil’ (it did make it into the big seven, after all!) and 6 is
considered to be the ‘devil’s number’, ie, 666.

FAITH – 7 songs. In many religions, the number
7 is considered a holy number. God created the world in 7 days (but actually it
was six because He rested on the seventh. Ha!), there are 7 Seals in the book of Revelation, and 7 is the number after 6 (and is therefore ‘higher’ than 6).

I love everything
about this song. It is the theme song of my life right now (or rather, one of
many). To quote my friend @lissarob: ‘It makes me feel like I’m
missing family I’ve never even met.’

So true.

Speaking of family…

18. The
Echelon.

The Echelon are the
Thirty Seconds To Mars family. I’m pretty hesitant to call us ‘fans’ because I
feel like it’s something more than that. We all do, Jared, Shannon and Tomo
included. Yes yes yes I know we’re all delusional and we can’t possibly have
this deep connection with a band and we need to stop fangirling and blah blah
blah but you know what? WE DO HAVE A DEEP CONNECTION. So much so that the band are frequently asked about The Echelon during interviews, and sometimes people even write articles about us. Which other band has their fans pulled into
interviews and articles on a regular basis?? Exaaaaccctly. Now I’m not so naïve
to think that I know everything about the guys or that they share everything
with us, but they do share a lot more than what would be considered ‘normal’ or
‘average’. They love us just as much as we love them, regardless of how it must
look from the outside. Don’t believe me? Well take a look atthis. It’s
a letter that Jared wrote to us after finishing the short film for Do Or Die. Hold
onto your feelings. Mine are out of control.

While we’re on the
topic of The Echelon…

17. I love you all.

Meanwhile, in Australia, we were having THE BEST TIME EVER!!!!

I’ve met some of
the most wonderful people on the planet through Mars, and I’ve made some of the
best friends I’ve ever had. People who love me and accept me for who I am.
People who share my hopes, my dreams, and who will always support me and
believe in me. And I will always support them and believe in them. I’ve said it
before and I’ll say it again; The Echelon are more my family than some of the
people who I share my DNA with. MarsHugs all round! We are always there to
support one another, and will even go as far as gifting one another concert tickets, CDs, DVDs and Mars Merch. Can you name another ‘fan base’ who does
that regularly? As in EVERY SINGLE DAY? I didn’t think so.

Have you looked at
the prices for a ticket to a Thirty Seconds To Mars show lately? Holy
Guacamole. They do everything in their power to make things as affordable as
possible, even to the point where they may lose money on a show. THAT’S how
much we mean to them. They also do a butt load of Church Of Mars shows (free),
giveaways (free) and Mars Flashes (also free). Their tickets are so
cheap that when I told my cousin (who is coming to a Melbourne show with me in March) the price, she was convinced that the tickets were either fake or were
for crap seats. Nope! Mars just love us. Now, I can already tell what the
haters are going to say, so let me address…

Not exactly Mars
related, but it is Jared related, so it counts!! This is one of the most beautiful movies ever, even without the Jared factor. He just makes it so much
better. I could watch him and listen to him for HOURS. Oh wait, I already do.
Especially during…

I can honestly say
that I’ve NEVER been interested in band interviews before. Maybe I’d watch them
if they happened to be on, but to actively seek them out? Forget it.

And then came Mars.

I’ve seen more
Thirty Seconds To Mars interviews this year than I’ve seen of any kind of
interview in my entire life combined. I seek them out, download them from YouTube
so I can keep them forever, sulk if I miss one and watch them endlessly. And I
do mean endlessly. Not only are they
incredibly inspiring and motivating, they are also freaking hilarious.

Not only is it
funny as hell, it’s also very insightful! The guys always have such insightful
and inspiring things to say. Which brings me to…

8. The endless Mars quotes that I post on my blog and my
(various) Twitters.

Someone REALLY
needs to make those quotes into a book. They inspire me to live, to laugh, to
believe, to have faith, and to…

7. Dream Out
Loud.

Yes, I know I’ve
mentioned Dreams a few times now, but can you blame me?? Mars and Dreams go
hand in hand. Exhibit A:

6. Jared Leto On Dreams.

Imagine having him
at your school and talking to your class like that. I don’t know how the people
in the room stayed so calm. Kudos to them! I’d probably be in tears.

5. And he’d probably hug me just like this, because that’s
the kind of awesome person that he is.

This is from the Do
Or Die short film. Let’s just take a minute to appreciate that while some
musicians (and I use the term here VERY LOOSELY) are spitting on their fans,
Mars are hugging us and featuring us in their music videos. Something to think
about.

I love them more
than I can say. Not in an ‘I want to marry them’ way, and not in an ‘I want to
date them’ kind of way. In a way that I can’t even begin to explain. In a ‘you
quite literally saved my life’ kind of way. Because they did. And not just
me…They sang a song to save us all.

Jared, Shannon +
Tomo, I love you. You make my life better just by existing.

Thank you. For
everything.

So there you have
it. My long and ramble-y Thirtieth Post on the Thirtieth of September about the
top Thirty Reasons I Love Thirty Seconds To Mars.

Thanks for playing
along!

Xo

*Why
yes, I DO have multiple versions of every Thirty Seconds To Mars Song
available.

** No,
I wasn’t on drugs. As I’ve mentioned before, my darling mother proof-reads all
posts for me, and she thinks you’ll all think I was on drugs.

I
wasn’t.

Or was
I???

Hahaha.

I
wasn’t.

Probably.

NOTE: The images in this post were found using a Google image search, or screen capped from Thirty Seconds To Mars short films or YouTube videos. No copyright infringement is intended, and if one of these pictures is yours and you'd like me to remove it or credit you, please let me know.Xo